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August 5, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Hosea 11:1-11, Colossians 3:1-4, Luke 12:13-21
“Youthful Idealism: Receiving the Past, Giving the
Future”
There’s a poem by Meg Jeffers called “Ordnance” that says life today is like a
bomb in each one of our gardens. It is like Jesus warning us here that we
never know just how and when and for what our souls are required of us. We
would like to think that we can build up sufficient wealth and well-being,
property and possession in this world. We would like to buy safety and
security from the world -- so that our souls can just play and make merry each
day. But there is a bomb in our garden, and it is not going away of its
own volition.
Of course, it goes by such huge names as we remember especially today -- “Holocaust”
and “Hiroshima” – and such current names as Bosnia, Iraq, and Darfur. But
the bomb lies within and among us as well – we never know when one of us may “go
off” on as many others as we can take with us at the time. The bomb belongs
to us all, recognize it or not – it touches us all, it threatens us all. How
do we openly confess and receive the past? How do we adequately remember such
horrible moments and times as we do today? Even all the way back to the very
first biblical death when Cain murders Abel –“genocide” of half the human race of
their generation? Yet as inexplicable as so many murders today? If we
do not let ourselves stand in solidarity with all victims everywhere, how may we
hope to provide our children with a future worthy of their trust in us?
The poem says,
There is a bomb in my garden.
I know I should call someone but imagine the hubbub:
men in mackintoshes leaving boot prints in the peas,
their heels pasted with scraps of tender lettuce,
and I would be shunted off,
barred from my home while other muck about
in what is mine.
No, I think I will let it be.
Clean the exposed parts; buff it up, perhaps.
Build a gazebo; plant roses.
Listen to it tick.
Listen to it tick. That’s Jesus and this story applied to each one of our
souls and to the soul of the world. Listen to it tick!
There is a bomb in our garden. We know we should call someone. It is
like the lingering sickness of Anne Frank and experimentation and extermination
in concentration camps -- or of Sadako and radiation and “atom bomb sickness” --
or of Agent Orange -- or of depleted uranium – all of “this poison with a half-life
the age of the Earth.” (See poem of Ellen Bass, “I Wake Thinking About Depleted
Uranium,” used as Call to Communion today.) We know how desperate and even
how capable we are of capturing some of the powers of radiation, of chemical therapy,
even of nuclear energy for purposes of healing, nurturing, saving, sustaining.
But there is a bomb in our garden! There is a bomb in our hearts.
And there is nobody left to call but us. Each one of us has to get rid of
the bomb in ourselves for us to begin to disarm this world.
Imagine – this world spends half a trillion dollars a year on weapons – many of
them conceived, designed, constructed, distributed in and by our own nation, often
with help from our government. One-fifth of all the world’s scientists are
engaged in research on military projects. With respect to Cain and Abel, it
is estimated that our world has been at relative peace only 500 years of our 3600
years of recorded human history. Some three and one-half billion of us, human
beings – increasing numbers of us civilians victims – and now many wounded who would
have died before -- have been killed or murdered in some 14,000 wars in our very
short life as a species on this planet. How do we even imagine what and how
other species and Earth herself suffer from all our wars? . . .
There is a bomb in our whole garden. Collateral damage is our way of life.
This rich fool in Jesus’ story pretends we just need “super-size” our economy –
lower our taxes, drive up our interest, squander the past, borrow the future – pull
down perfectly good barns to build even larger ones to hoard all our grains and
our goods for ourselves – as if we could take them all with us! He thinks
he is so progressive, so successful he has outgrown any need for his soul -- for
his consciousness of all the world -- for his conscience of his place in all the
world. Jesus says, Not so fast! We never know what crisis, what call
upon us is next. We only know that one is. Each time we choose it is
for our children or us.
The God of Hosea, thank God – long-suffering, heart-broken husband-parent Hosea
– still is not done with us yet! Our God still calls us – even as small children
call us in the spirit of Isaiah’s “a little child shall lead them” to lie down in
peace -- even as Anne Frank calls us -- even as Sadako calls us -- even as these
young artists of Youth ArtWorks call us – presenting their magnificent works today
(www.youthartworks.org)
– just as all the children and “youthful idealism” of our own lives as families
and life together as church call us -- God still calls us to come out of our
bondage in Egypt! To come out of our death in the tomb! Even the tomb
of the bomb in our garden. Come out, come out, wherever we are!
God is to us no longer, if God ever was, the God of punishment and retribution.
Our God, insists Hosea, still and always will be to us all, all over the world,
“like those who lift infants to their cheeks.” Even though we may conscript
children today into our terror and war, still there are parents, still there are
grandparents, still there are those who give care as God does – God who feels every
feeling with us, God who weeps every weeping with us. God goes on loving us
– even when we do not practice and participate in our own healing. Jesus even
now would gather all of us in as an eagle covers her young, but we would not, for
we pretend not to know the things that will make for justice and peace.
God would lead us to kindness, would wrap us with love. God would lift us
and touch us, would bend to us and feed us. God would have us choose between
God and war. How can God give us up? To whom can God give us up?
What other hope does God have on this earth – any more than our children and youth
have any hope but us? How can God any more despair and abandon us, than we
can despair and abandon our children and youth? Out of the depth of his own
suffering, Hosea is able to hear and to feel the very same changes in God.
God’s heart breaks. God’s compassion grows. God chooses not to execute,
not to carry out anger. “For I am God! I will not come in wrath!”
Wrath is not God.
God is a choice-making God, and we who are made in God’s image are choice-makers,
too. God chooses what to do with God’s anger, how to deploy God’s strength.
And God in Jesus chooses to die before God will kill – any more if God ever did.
Yes, God roars like a lion. And yes, we can be made to feel like trembling
birds, says Hosea – like Sankofa birds, and doves, and cranes, and even like pink
flamingoes! Like the birds who inhabit the vines of the church, and even Canadian
honkers who stoop to share with us their parks and their lakes!
God in the end chooses to be the God of Anne Frank – the God of “ideals, and dreams,
and cherished hopes” -- in spite of all shattering, horrible truth. God chooses
to be the God of Sadako – not about winning so much as about folding cranes of hope
for healing – healing us all – one by one to the end. God chooses to be the
God of Youth ArtWorks. Which God do we choose? Which God do we choose
to image in our own lives? Sister Joan Chittister says, “It is the kind of
God in which we choose to believe that in the end makes all the difference . . .
. Until I discover the God in which I believe, I will never understand another thing
about my own life . . . . If my God is life and hope, I will live my life in fullness
overflowing . . . . Made in the image of God, we grow in the image of God we make
of ourselves.” Grow in the image of God we make for ourselves. Amen.
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